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    Kihtmutt

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    Kihtmutt

    Kihtmutt

    Untitled Article

    There has been not a little outcry raised against the concluding incident of the last number of Bleak House j the death of Krook by Spontaneous Combustion is certainly not an agreeable incident , but it has a graver fault than that of " shocking" people with " sensitive nerves ; " it is a fault in Art , and a fault in Literature , overstepping the limits of Fiction , and giving currency to a vulgar error . We must be permitted a passing remark on both these faults . It is allowable to introduce the Supernatural in Art , but not the Improbable ; the reason is , that in the one case , Imagination and our mysterious sympathy with the Unknown are appealed to , without pretence of claiming more than imaginative credence ; in the other case , the Understanding is called upon to ratify as a truth what it rejects as falsehood .

    When Shakspeare introduces the Supernatural , it is enough for us that in those remote ages people believed in the existence of Ghosts and Fairies ; but when Balzac and Dumas introduce Clairvoyance as a part of their machinery , and make the events depend thereon , doing so as if Clairvoyance were an undoubted element in our human life , then the rebellious Understanding rejects as impertinent what it recognises as false . Dickens , therefore , in employing Spontaneous Combustion as a part of his machinery , has committed this fault of raising the incredulity of his readers ; because even supposing Clairvoyance and Spontaneous Combustion to be scientific truths , and not the errors of imperfect science , still the simple fact that they belong to the extremely questionable opinions held by a very small minority , is enough to render their introduction into Fiction a mistake . Thev are questions to be argued , not to be treated as ascertained truths .

    In the second place , we assure Mr . Dickens that Spontaneous Combustion is not only a scientific error , which we doubt if he can find one organic chemist of any authority to countenance now , but is absolutely impossible , according to all known laws of combustion , and to the constitution of the human body . As a novelist he is not to be called to the bar of science ; he has doubtless picked up the idea among the curiosities of his reading from some credulous adherent to the old hypothesis , and has accepted it as not improbable . This is not the place to enter minutely into such a question , but we will endeavour to state a few fundamental objections in language sufficiently popular for general comprehension .

    The hypothesis is , that ardent drinkers bo steep the tissues of their bodies in alcohol , or induce so morbid a constitution , that a highly combustible gas is formed within their bodies , which either spontaneously , or by the accidental approach of a flame , kindles , and burns away the whole body , as a candle burns away when once lighted . Now , if you consider this simple fact , that in the human body three-fourths of it are water , and that even gunpowder will not ignite if damp , you will

    understand one reason why the body is not easily combustible . You may char it as you may char damp wood , but you cannot produce flame from it as long as it retains its fluids . Suppose the body soaked in alcohol , and the alcohol to remain in the tissues as alcohol , even that will not make the tissues burn . This Christinas you will , at snapdragon , see the proof ; the raisins will be soaked in alcohol , the alcohol will burn , but not the raisins .

    It has been said , indeed , that in certain morbid conditions of the tissues , there is a gas formed which will ignite on contact with the air ; this gas , phosphuretted hydrogen , is unfortunately a gas that never has been detected in any living tissue , that could not exist there , and even if it could , would only consume itself , and not the incombustible moist tissues ; for to burn the body you must first completely dry it , and when you have dried it , it is no longer a living body . With moistened fingers we snuff candles unhurt ; with moistened hands Boijtigny tossed about molten iron as if it had been snow . Unless , therefore , it is maintained that the effect of continued drinking is altogether to change the conditions of vitality , to re move the liquids from the body , and substitute alcohol in their place , N pontuneous Combustion is an impossibility ; the body will not burn cx-™]> t by the continued application of intense heat furnished externally ; and

    < 'anuot be made to flame . la one sense , ' Spontaneous Combustion is the incessant act of Life itself ; the tissues are called into uetivity through constant oxidation ; and Man is truly said to be ashes . Hut Spontaneous Combustion , as the denouement of the drama with blue lire from the side scenes , is only ad-Mussible as a metaphor . Captain Markyat , it may be remembered , employed the same equivocal ineident in Jacob Faithful . One phrase deserves immortality for its < 7 < iicism ; it ran somewhat thus : — " There was a puff of smoke up the ' himiuvy , and that was all 1 saw of my mother . "

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    In another part of our paper will be found a report of a proceeding m * n « Insolvent Court , in which Mr . Charlich Phillipk , not content with < he extremely unenviable notoriety he has already earned for himself , was mvu . se enough , as well as ungenerous enough , to refuse to bear Mr . Holyoake , because ; Mr . IIolyoakk does not consider the Bible as containing hia confession of faith , though he is willing to consider the act of

    taking the oath as binding on his conscience . A former Commissioner , following the precedent established by Lord Brougham , had the wisdom to allow Mr . Holyoake the same exemption which he would allow to a Quaker , who , from religious scruples , would refuse to take the oath , and which Lord Brougham did allow to the Chinese . It is from religious scruples that Mr- Holyoake refuses . The Bible is not his Confession of Faith , and it would be hypocrisy in him to take oath upon it . The Commissioner appreciated this , and allowed the oath to be taken in the onlyeffective way it could be taken . Mr . Charles PHiLLiPS _ with characteristic coarseness , refused .

    To the public , the question involved in this refusal is a very important one . Are we , or are we not , outlaws , if we hold religious opinions differing from those of the Established Church ? That is the plain question . The answer leads to terrible results . Is the Catholic , or the Dissenter , or the Jew , or the Spiritualist , or the Pantheist , or the Atheist , as such , a member of the social body , a citizen , or an outlaw ? Not to complicate this question , we will separate from it those members of tolerated religions , and include only the Spiritualist , the Pantheist , and the Atheist—and ask , are they citizens or outlaws ? If society says , " we will have no liberty of opinion ; we will admit into our state no man who does not believe the creed we have recognised as the state creed ; all dissidents are outlaws : "

    then a direct understanding will easily be arrived at . We will have a fight for Liberty of Thought , and if vanquished , seek some other home , as our Pilgrim Fathers did before us . If , on the contrary , Society says that Liberty of Opinion is granted , and that we are citizens in spite of our heterodoxy , then we say that the refusal to take our oaths in a court of Law is a direct violation of our citizenship . For observe : the Atheist is called upon to pay his taxes fqr the support of the " sacred institutions " of society ; he helps to support the Church which he disowns , and the Law which disowns him ; he helps to pay for the Army and Navy , the Ambassadors and Red Tapists , the Police and the Prisons , and the Poor

    Houses ; he is drawn for the Militia ; he is called upon in every way a citizen can be called upon to support and defend that society of which he is a member . In return , Society undertakes to protect his life and property ; it takes justice out of his own hands , that it ' may more peaceably and equitably administer it for him . Its Courts of Law are for that purpose . Can , therefore , Society in the one case claim the help of the Atheist as a citizen , and in another refuse him the very return for which he gave that help ? When the State pockets Mr . Holyoake ' s money , its conscience is not troubled by the fact of his being an Atheist ; but when he claims that protection for which he paid the money , then the sensitive conscience rises in alarm , and refuses ! To the tax-gatherer he is a citizen ;

    to Commissioner Phillips he is an outlaw ! Say at once the Atheist is an outlaw , and shall be hunted down like a dog ; that we can understand ; but that you dare not say ! A man of the known piety and virtue of Professor Newman would have his oath refused , because he does not accept the Bible as the truth , and his evidence would not be taken ; while the evidence of the vilest scoundrel from the lock-up house would be accepted Passing from the general to the personal aspect of this question , let us note how strangely the objection comes from Mr . Charles Phillips , whose name will be remembered , as long as it is remembered , in connexion with Courvoisier ! Mr . Holyoake is a man of unsullied purity , of the most distinguished sincerity in thought and speech . We differ very widely from

    him on some moral and religious points , but no difference can prevent our emphatic testimony to his integrity . There is no man ' s word we would sooner take than his . Mr . Charles Phillips probably knows nothing of this ; but Mr . Charles Phillips—the author of Celestine and St . Aubert—the scorner of bigots and the panegyrist of Paine—the defender of Courvoisier—standing as the representative of indignant orthodoxy , refusing to Mr . Holyoake his rights of citizenship , presents a spectacle a Mephistopheles would gloat over . Mr . Ciiaklks Phillips will say , perhaps , that he was young wl ^ cn he wrote Celestine and St . Aubert ; but this " error of his youth" might have taught him , at least , to credit the sincerity of disbelief , and the possibility of an unbeliever not being an unworthy riti / en ' When Mr . Holyoake defined bis creed of Secularism as that of

    one " who gives precedence to the duties of this life over considerations which pertain to another world , " Mr . Phillips exclaimed , " O ! you mean that you consider your duties to man superior to your duties to God . " Now , what God does Mr . Phillips specially refer to ? The Cod of Paine , the God of Mr . Holyoake , or the God to whom the Jury were to be responsible if they found Courvoisier guilty of the crime which Mr . l ' lliLUPB knew him to be guilty of ?

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    A new volume by Comtk has just appeared . It is called , Cutechisme Vositivistc , ou sommaire Exposition de la Reliyion llnivcrsclle , and contains , in the form of dialogues between a Priest and a Woman , a popular exposition of his religious views . 1 m this , a . s in all his later writings , we nee the deep and ineffaceable influence of one woman upon bis life and system ; to her he owes , as he confesses , the development which enabled him to " found the universal Religion on sound Philosophy , after having elaborated the latter from Science , " or ( as lie puts it in language which will raise a smile ) to continue the career of Aristoti . k by that of Saint Paul . It will be strange if he does not succeed iu engaging the sympathies of women , who are the best propagandists ; for not only will they appreciate his lofty , and yet juat estimation of their « ex , and the part it plays in life ;

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    fritics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforcethem . —Edinburgh Review .

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    December 11 , 1852 . ] THE LEADER . 1189

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 11, 1852, page 1189, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1964/page/17/